LARS HOLMSTRÖM

”Rooms”

I sat in his lap more than half a century ago - so I’ve been told. I can’t recall it myself, since I was only about 1 years old. My great-grandfather from my mother’s side, Calisto Lodi (1872-1950) arrived in Finland from a small north-Italian alpine village in the late 1800’s. Who was he and why had he left for the far North? I have visited this small village to look for my ‘roots’, information on my great-grandfather and possible reasons for his exile. Did he emigrate because of some threat? Was he an orphan? Or did he just seek after a better living in Finland, then an autonomous part of Russia. Or was it just a random adventure without any goal? Did he plan to go back to his original home country to his parents and friends? Who were his parents? Nobody knows the answers anymore...

He arrived by boat with a small group of Italians in Vyborg, which at that time was the second largest and the most international city of Finland. He married a Finnish woman and earned his living among other things as “freelance” organ grinder playing in Vyborg and it’s vicinity. At that time it was difficult to get Finnish citizenship so he never became Finnish citizen, although we don’t know if he ever applied for one. When the Soviet Union started war against Finland in 1939, he became a refugee for the second time. He and his family were evacuated from Karelia to Finland like some half a million Finns.

In the series of my works “Rooms” I have debated in my mind the meaning of places and spaces. I have aimed at discovering an inexplicable feeling of “being somewhere in between”. In the silent standstill of the rooms once inhabited the inevitable decay reveals the perish ability of all. A miraculously bright light glowing from somewhere beyond looks like a possibility of starting a new day, of getting some closeness and happiness. Inside the walls the sunlight travels without sound trying to catch the fleeing shadows. The dimness hides and protects like deep sleep. Time has left its marks - behind these marks are human fates. The crumbling walls are a symbol of longing, yearning after times passed. Abandoned empty spaces hold hidden stories. Once there was life and sometime in the future life comes back, but you can’t get back the past and the future is unknown…